January 31, 2008 Session Report

This week's report will be a bit shorter than the one from last week. Probably due to threat of inclement weather (which didn't materialize as of our 10 PM close time), there were just six of us: Clayton, Paul, Gabe, Nick, Ben and myself. We played a total of three games: Can't Stop, Power Grid, and Atlantic Star.

Can't Stop was a four player, another virtuoso performance by Clayton whose "all or nothing approach" got the job done once again, while the other three players (Paul, Gabe and myself) did well to just get one number to the top rung. Then Nick and Ben arrived, Nick with a newly-purchased copy of Power Grid. I happened to have my new Power Plant deck in the bag, so we mixed and match, playing a game with the new deck on the US Map. I played with Clayton as my teammate, and things were looking up until we came up about 7 electros short of ending the game with a plant capacity of 14 (15 was the victory condition). The game ran another turn, into Phase 3 power plant purchases, and Gabe managed to catch up and we both built to 16, Gabe winning on the tiebreak (most money). Nick and Paul powered 14, and Nick won the most money tiebreaker while Ben, who wound up the game with more dough than anybody, could only power 13. The game, with the new Power Plant deck, moved quite smoothly, clocking in at just around two hours.

Final game of the evening was Atlantic Star,which I managed to win on the final cruise by waiting and picking up two good cards after others were spending to flush through the depleted deck. Final scores were John 47, Ben and Gabe 41 (Ben second on the tiebreak), Nick 36, Paul 30 and Clayton 29.

Hope the weather holds up and we have better attendance next week. Came close to our all-time Thurs night record attendance (which is 14 from March of last year) last week and would like to see it smashed some time soon!